Tag Archives: thoughts

Is a very sad thing indeed! I’m spending my days taking pictures of spiders that have set up residence in my mother’s house. Or taking pictures of my broken nails and complaining of toast! Today we went grocery shopping and that was my highlight for the week. Although I am seeing Beethoven tonight (not a date, mind you, but seeing his 7th Symphony with my mother). I’m also dying my hair black again…don’t ask! Hoping for some job interviews but just playing the waiting game…how self-pitying this post is. Please feel free to disregard :)

On the bright side, I’m starting to think about and write an article with the hope of getting published. If any good can come from being unemployed, that would be it!

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First off, I’m not giving you the finger! This is my second run in with…toast! This time, however, it’s not because of the bread. The culprit was the toaster. I was apparently too forceful pushing down the button to start toasting. I’ve never broken two nails so low in such a short period of time with the connection of toast…I think I like bread now…

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The second part involves libraries from Wales, England, Scotland, and Ireland

The first one is the Long Room from the The Library of Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. I saw this library last summer and it knocked my socks off! The photo just does not do it justice! It’s the largest research library in Ireland and its biggest draw is the famous Book of Kells, which is well worth seeing if you make it there!

The Book of Kells, created by Monks in 800

The National Library of Ireland is also found in Dublin and is a reference library (i.e. no borrowing privileges)

The Theology Room at St. Deiniol’s library in Wales is seen below and is considered the largest residential library in the U.K. It has over 250,000 books.

The Glasgow School of Art has the Charles Rennie Macintosh Library in Scotland. Wish I’d seen it while I was there but only had time for a tattoo…ah me, priorities…anyway, the library carries the name of Charles Rennie Macintosh as he was the architect of the school and library. He’s famous for his art nouveau style in art and furniture design.

The Signet Library in Edinburgh, Scotland was visited by King George IV who described the upper library as “the finest drawing room in Europe”.

This is the Duke of Humphrey’s Library at Oxford University in England. It’s the main research library of the University of Oxford and is one of the oldest libraries in Europe (established in 1602, making it 408 years old!).

The Hereford Cathedral Chained Library is an interesting one! The practice of chaining books was the normal practice for reference libraries starting in the Middle Ages until the 18th century. The Chained Library has been around since the 1100’s (making it close to a 1000 years old!).

Next is the John Rylands Library in Manchester, England. It’s a Victorian Gothic building and holds many illuminated manuscripts including a copy of the Gutenberg Bible.

Lastly, we have the Old British Reading Room in the British Museum, London, England. The British Museum is the oldest museum in the world (1753) and features the Rosetta Stone. The Reading Room only opened to the general public for the first time in 2000. The Reading Room sits at the heart of the Great Court and has been used by the likes of Karl Marx, Rudyard Kipling, Virginia Woolf, Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats, Thomas Hardy, George Bernard Shaw, and Mahatma Gandhi.

That’s it for this part…next is Europe. That one will take me while!

Thanks again for reading. Please let me know if you’re enjoying this blog or if you know of other libraries you should like me to add!

I seem to really like making lists…so here’s another one! I thought I would pull together photos of some of the beautiful libraries in North America.

The Library of Parliament in Ottawa, Ontario looks gorgeous! I shall have to get there some day! Its picture is on our $10 bill…

This picture was taken the day after a fire burnt down the building next the the library which was untouched in 1916.

The Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library at the University of Toronto has an ugly exterior but is beautiful inside. I was lucky enough to take a class right in the middle of this library and was surrounded by these beautiful, rare books every week! It contains some Egyptian papyrus manuscript fragments from 245 B.C. as well as Darwin’s proof copy with annotations of On the Origin of Species (both of which I had a chance to see).

The next are from the U.S. This first one is, of course, the Library of Congress in Washington. It’s the largest library in the world with 22 million catalogued books!

Here we have the Library of the Boston Anthenaeum. It was established in 1807,making it just over 200 years old!

Next is the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, which has the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare’s printed works. Funny, you’d think you’d find that in England!

This is the Law Library…in Iowa! I love the spiral staircase! It’s apparently five stories.

Here is the New York City Public Library. It’s one of the largest public library systems in the U.S. and the one of the largest research libraries in the world. It’s been featured in many movies, such as Spider-Man, The Wiz, and of course, Ghostbusters.

This is the Morgan Library & Museum in New York. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1966 and contains everything from Leonardo Da Vinci prints/drawings to Bob Dylan’s notes of Blowin’ in the Wind.

And lastly, the Suzzallo Library is a part of the University of Washington libraries in Seattle. I probably like it as it was built in the Gothic style…

These are just a few of the libraries in North America…I could do this all day! But, that would be boring. I will put up a few more posts on this topic…next will be the libraries in the UK and then in Europe (which in itself will probably need to be a two-parter!).

These libraries have made me realise that I need to travel more! Nothing can make me happier than seeing these libraries in person (okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration…eating a hot fudge sundae would make me pretty happy!)

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Yes, I have more! There have been a number of songs written for librarians so here we go again…

The first song on my list is Librarian by My Morning Jacket. I’ve never heard this song before but I rather like it (of course my favourite lyric is “take off those glasses and let down your hair for me”…yeesh!)

This one is by New Zealand band, Haunted Love, called…you guessed it…Librarian

Karen by the Go-Betweens is about someone looking for “affection” and he “don’t want no hoochie-coochie-mama” and then goes on to say he wants “a tiger on bended knees”?!?!? What!?!?!

Jonathan Rundman wrote Librarian and it is a free download if you’re interested. It comes from his album entitled Public Library. He really must be a fan of libraries! Anyway, click on the link just below here and have a listen.

I love this next one! Library by Cursor Miner, who is Robert Tubb from England. According to Uncut, his music is “electro Syd Barrett meets Aphex Twin meets Gary Numan with a touch of early Eno and a nod at Beck”. How can you not love this!?!

Tori Amos compiled her best songs into Tales of a Librarian. The concept was that a librarian is a “chronicler” and she also put together the collection within the confines of the Dewey Decimal Classification System. Beyond all that, there aren’t any songs about librarians on the album.

The Librarian’s are a band (that no longer exists) from California. They’re labelled a “power pop band” and were apparently not very librarian-like with a raucous stage performance. An interesting fact, one of the band members, Ryan Gan, got his MLIS and is now an actual librarian in California.

If that weren’t enough…there’s a band from West Virginia called Librarians. They call their music Indie…

There are more songs of course but I think I’ll stop there…

Thanks for reading, and watching, and listening :)

Addendum

Pam mentioned in the comments about how the video for Head Over Heels by Tears for Fears takes place in the library. So, being an 80’s fan, I thought I would add the video…enjoy!

The Librarians is a comedy television series that premiered in Australia in 2007. The Librarians follows the story of librarian Frances O’Brien who is Catholic (and racist) and is forced to hire a former friend (who is a drug dealer) as the children’s librarian. Apparently, the producers researched for the show with real librarians and have consequently not included shushing and glasses (I seem to have a real bee in my bonnet over glasses…)

Ahhh…the lovely and talented Giles! Yet another male librarian! He hails from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and is attractive, a wealth of knowledge (but of course), kicks butt on occasion, and is British! For the uninitiated, Giles is Buffy’s Watcher and is basically there to help her out in slaying vampires.

This video is from a kid’s show called All That, in which there was a librarian that was constantly telling people to keep the noise down but she herself made a lot of racket (yelling, using power drills etc…). I have to admit, there have been times when closing the library that a gong would have come in handy!

Funnily enough, this TV series features…Marion the Librarian! This was a kid’s show from clearly a while back (80’s). I won’t go through the synopsis since it’s all explained in the clip above.

A librarian was featured in a Twilight Zone episode entitled The Obsolete Man, starring Burgess Meredith. He portrays a librarian in a future totalitarian state, who is put on trial for the crime of being “obsolete.” Apparently, the State has eliminated literacy (whaaa!?!?) and being a librarian is punishable by death. There’s nothing like a bit of knowledge to throw a wrench into the works…

And here we have a clip from Monty Python’s Flying Circus (series 1, episode 10) featuring a gorilla being interviewed for a librarian position. Only from Monty Python :)

Seinfeld ran an episode wherein Kramer dated a librarian. The above clip is from the same episode…one of the funniest scenes from Seinfeld in my opinion!

Lastly (but not least…I am a bit of a Star Trek buff), in the original series of Star Trek, Mr. Atoz was a librarian in the All Our Yesterdays episode. His name is a play on “A to Z”. From StarTrek.com:

Last inhabitant of the planet Sarpeidon. Mr. Atoz and several duplicates of himself oversaw a vast library in the atavachron, a time-portal device that allowed inhabitants of the doomed planet to travel back to the past in order to escape their inevitable doom.

I hope you enjoyed this series! I might very well follow through with more but I’m thinking of other things now :)

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So, I did have a request for books featuring librarians…and being a librarian, I really should talk about books. In no particular order.

Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series features a librarian who was magically transformed into an orangutan. The librarians in this series have magical powers…but don’t get too excited, the powers are only related to books and library work. Did you notice that the orangutan is wearing glasses?! Ah me…librarian’s in glasses we cannot escape (although many do wear glasses, I have to admit…rather sheepishly).

Kingsley Amis wrote That Uncertain Feeling which says on the cover, “the hilarious misadventures of a librarian in an out of love”. It’s a satirical look at a married Welsh librarian who has an affair with a local (and married) socialite. It was also made into a movie that starred Peter Sellers as the librarian.

Charlaine Harris is famous for her vampire novels featuring Sookie Stackhouse. She also wrote the Aurora Teagarden mystery series where the main character, Aurora “Roe” Teagarden, the local librarian, solves the crimes. Aurora is described as 4’11” and wears…glasses…yup!

Next is Richard Peck’s Here Lies the Librarian. This is the description from the book because I’m too lazy to retype it in my own words:

Peewee idolizes Jake, a big brother whose dreams of auto mechanic glory are fueled by the hard road coming to link their Indiana town and futures with the twentieth century. And motoring down the road comes Irene Ridpath, a young librarian with plans to astonish them all and turn Peewee’s life upside down.

I like the “shhh” on the headstone. I try so hard not to shush people :)

The Magic Tree House series written by Mary Pope Osbourne features Annie and Jack who travel through space and time and around the world on many adventures. Both of the kids become “Master Librarians” and gather books for Morgan Le Fay’s library.

The next book is The Time Traveler’s Wife which I loved! Written by Audrey Niffenegger it features the main character, Henry De Tamble, as a librarian in Chicago. He suffers from “Chrono Displacement” which makes him involuntarily jump through time. It was of course, made into a movie starring Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams. One of the few books that made me cry…

Then we have Stephen King’s It. One of the main characters is Mike Hanlon, who is a librarian in the small town of Derry, Maine. Does he save the day? Not quite, but he is involved in one of the creepiest scenes that takes place in the library. It also features the creepiest/scariest clown you’ll ever read about. But we wont go there…

Next, I will give honourable mention to some manga/graphic novels that feature librarians.

The first is the Oracle from Batman, who is Barbara Gordon (who used to be Batgirl). She was paralysed thanks to the Joker and is now a savvy librarian.

Then we have Read or Die where Yomiko Readman works for the Library of England in search of rare and powerful books. What can I say? I love the title!

Lastly, we have the librarian Lucien from Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman graphic novels. Lucien tends to The Dreaming’s library, where all the books that are dreamt of, but never written, are contained. I’ve always wanted to read these novels, particularly since I’m such a big fan of Neil Gaimans!

That’s it for now…again, there are many more books out there but this was meant to be a brief overview. I think I might explore T.V. next…